Is President Trump irrecoverably damaging America?
I’ve been pondering that lately, partly because several of my friends have been so traumatized by Trump that they are wondering whether to give up on America and move to Canada to rebuild their lives there. I’ve tried to reassure them that this is not 1938 Germany.
They shrug and note that 1935 Germany wasn’t 1938 Germany, either — but that’s what it became.
Yet in the post-Cold War era, the typical authoritarian model isn’t the police state conjured by Hitlerian nightmares. Rather, it’s more nuanced. It’s one in which a charismatic leader is elected and then uses a democratic mandate to rig democratic institutions.
In such states, there are elections that aren’t entirely fair, news organizations that aren’t free but also aren’t Pravda, a repressive apparatus that may not torture dissidents but does audit and impoverish them. The rough model is Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungary, or the Law and Justice party’s Poland, or President Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines or Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India. You can call this competitive authoritarianism or a rigged democracy or something else, but a key feature is that elections still matter even if the playing field is tilted — and most important, such authoritarians are periodically ousted.
These 21st-century authoritarians have gained ground in many countries, partly in reaction to surging migration. But the longer trend runs against autocrats, I think.
That’s partly structural. Authoritarians surround themselves with sycophants, so that no one warns them when they proclaim dumb policies that tank the economy. Free from oversight, they yield to dissolution and corruption.
I’ve been covering authoritarians around the world my entire career, and so often they seemed unassailable as they banned me “for life.” But it usually turned out to be the dictator’s life, not mine.
When I first covered South Korea, it was a dictatorship that had tortured and imprisoned the dissident Kim Dae-jung. Kim recounted to me how he lay shivering in his freezing cell, feeling hopeless, and finally breaking down and weeping, tears cascading down icy cheeks. Yet I eventually covered Kim’s rise to the presidency and the dictators’ own prison sentences.
In recent years alone, look at what has happened to some of the most prominent authoritarians around the world. In Brazil, the Supreme Court in March ordered former President Jair Bolsonaro to stand trial on charges of discussing a coup to stay in office. And in Hungary, Orban’s party is now lagging in some opinion polls.
In the Philippines, Duterte targeted the brave journalist Maria Ressa, who faced up to 34 years in prison for committing journalism. But now Ressa has a Nobel Peace Prize and is free while Duterte is in a prison cell in The Hague, facing charges of crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court.
I caught up recently with Ressa, and her line to Americans is: “If you’re depressed now, think of the Philippines” — and find hope.
It’s true that transient leaders can do enduring damage. Brexit may leave Britain forever diminished. In the early 20th century Argentina was one of the world’s richest countries, but wretched governance has enfeebled it for a century. And corruption, civil war and misrule left China poorer per capita in 1950 than it had been almost eight centuries earlier, at the end of the Song dynasty.
Still, nations like America with strong institutions are hardy. The Roman Empire survived Nero and Caligula. The United States came through the Civil War and periodic bouts of lunacy, including previous flirtations with authoritarianism.
So where does Trump fit in?
I believe he is weakening the pillars that have made America the world’s strongest economy: higher education, scientific research, rule of law, a melting pot of immigrants, recruitment of the world’s best minds, the strong dollar, American soft power and the international architecture created by America in 1945 to underpin global security and trade.
Domestically, the United States is showing resilience. The federal courts have mostly stood strong, as have some law firms. Harvard University has shown courage and integrity in leading the effort to preserve the independence of higher education (conflict alert: I’m a former member of Harvard’s board of overseers, and my wife is a current member). Some news organizations like The Associated Press have stood their ground. And while Congress may shrink Medicaid and force some 10 million people to lose coverage, the resulting pain may simply expedite the end of Trumpism.
That will be too late, granted, for those who lose health insurance and die unnecessarily. And the Trump administration’s vaccine skepticism may leave measles endemic in the United States again, while the administration’s cancellation of research toward an mRNA flu vaccine increases the risk of a devastating new pandemic.
On balance, I think the United States can recover from Trump at home. I’m less confident that the United States can fix the Trumpian mess internationally.
Will Canadians trust the United States again anytime in the next two decades? Can NATO recover from the doubts Trump has seeded? Will the dollar-based global financial architecture remain strong? Will we be able to restore the international rules-based order, however hypocritical it sometimes was? Will our allies trust and rely on the American nuclear umbrella? Can we again knit together Pacific partners to deter Chinese aggression? Can we revive global health surveillance and fight Ebola where it erupts? Can we build a robust global governance system in time to keep artificial intelligence safe?
I’m skeptical. I fear the upshot is increased risk of war, of nuclear proliferation, of pandemics. Instead of protecting America, Trump may have made our world more dangerous, perhaps for decades to come — and that will not be easily reversed.
But here’s the other thing to remember: If Filipinos can win back their country, then surely we Americans can as well. Given the enormous stakes, this is a time for a rebirth of liberal patriotism. So don’t emigrate, friends; stay and fight for your country’s future. And the world’s.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.” @NickKristof
The post Hope After Trump appeared first on New York Times.
